UNDERSTANDING YOGA

What is yoga? Well, if you ask this question to some body chances are that you will be ridiculed to shame. Remember that popular Orient Fan commercial of yesteryears created by marketing guru late Shunu Sen. The simpleton in the commercial wants to know why to buy Orient Fan. He is told that Orient Fan has PSPO. Poor fellow acknowledges his ignorance about PSPO and all the hell breaks loose. Woh PSPO nahi jaanta! He does not know PSPO? This is how he is ridiculed, implying in no uncertain terms ‘shame on you’. Interestingly someone asked Shunu Sen what is PSPO. The shockingly simple reply was that ‘even I do not know’. Well that is yoga today for the masses. It is the latest fad around the town. With United Nations declaring a World Yoga Day on 21st of June yoga became a globally accepted fashion. We in India celebrated world yoga day, even yoga week at many places during the last few days. But the question remains what is yoga though it may not be the politically correct question. Coming to an answer then may be rather ticklish as yoga today has come to connote many things. It is fashion, it is a form of exercise to keep body in shape, it is a business, too, for quite a few smart operators and, of course, it is the band wagon on which to jump or else you are left behind. But all these apart, yoga is a much deeper concept which very few understand. Yoga is a science based on psychobiology. Yoga is a philosophy of life. Yoga is a psychological state. And above all yoga is the path to communion with the ultimate reality, the way to realise your real self. Media campaigns and popular discourses have made yoga appear as a series of techniques that can keep your physical and physiological health in right shape. It may be true to a certain extent. But not for all practitioners of yoga. Yoga is a science, an art and a practice. But most importantly yoga is the technique of mental fitness. Its aim is to achieve mental fitness or mind control. And through mind control to arrive at fitness of internal physiological mechanisms and get total health. Total health is not the way it is commonly understood. Total health is a holistic concept that encompasses a complete mind body synchronisation. The mind body conundrum is the cause of most of our problems. Yoga tends to resolve this by training the mind first. And then through the mind it controls bodily mechanisms by impacting the endocrine systems, the nervous system and the vascular system. The three are connected and interdependent. It is this aspect of yoga that has to be understood if its real objective is to be realised. According to Shree Aurobindo yoga includes as a vital and indispensable element in its total and ultimate aim the conversion of the whole being into a higher spiritual consciousness and a larger divine existence. It aims to reach the spiritual through the ritual motions of the bodily postures, ultimately leading to the communion with the divine. This is achieved through complete subjugation of the human personal will that is mind driven. To control the mind is crucial. But it is not all. Once mind is reined, the human being is ready to change his thought process and arrives at equanimity that is advocated in the Gita.